Rick Levy says he was flying to a show with singer Peter Noone in the early 2000s when he started thinking.

How did a guy who grew up in a middle-class Allentown neighborhood end up playing guitar for the lead singer of top 1960s band Herman’s Hermits, as well as for hitmakers Jay & The Techniques and others?

“We were flying around all the time, having a good old time and I was really thinking to myself as I’d be flying — I said, ‘How have I gotten to this place? How have I gotten here?’ ” Levy says.

More than 15 years later, that soul-searching led to Levy’s memoir, “High in the Mid-’60s: How to Have a Fabulous Life in Music Without Being Famous!”

CONTRIBUTED PHOTO

'High in the Mid-60s ... How to Have A Fabulous Life in Music Without Being Famous! is a memoir by Lehigh Valley native Rick Levy

'High in the Mid-60s ... How to Have A Fabulous Life in Music Without Being Famous! is a memoir by Lehigh Valley native Rick Levy (CONTRIBUTED PHOTO)

Released Nov. 4 by Crossroad Press, it is very much a memoir rather than a biography. At just 106 pages, it’s more of a treatise on life in the music business, though it’s full of Lehigh Valley references and memories that readers who were into the local music scene in the ’60s and ’70s — will enjoy. The title is cribbed from the first album of Levy’s Lehigh Valley band, The Limits.

But Levy’s story also is a parable about the industry, its heartaches and successes.

“As I started editing it and putting it together and putting it in sections, I started looking at ‘What are the other things that are important to me that could be important to other people?” Levy says in a phone call from St. Augustine, Fla., where he lives.

The book even includes several “self-help” sections on industry topics such as getting a record deal and other career advice.

“Having some kind of balance in life. … And having some other interests so that I’m not just deathly, boringly and uni-dimensional,” Levy says. “Nothing is worse to me than just sitting in a club and having somebody just talking about music all night. It gets kind of boring.”

The book reveals that Levy grew up on South 16th Street in Allentown, near the YMCA, but in the book — and in the interview — he says he has little memory of his childhood.

“It was a good childhood, great parents,” he says in the call. “But very bland. Nothing that really resonated. Normal stuff – Cub Scouts, which I hated. Any kind of organizational stuff, I always rebelled.”

Levy found his lifelong passion on a trip to New York with a family friend, Elliot Wexler, who, it turns out, was president of Columbia Records Distribution, worked for Decca Records in London and managed ’60s jazz-pop singer Buddy Greco.

Levy says Wexler brought the first Elvis Presley albums into Levy’s house, got him a tape recorder and vinyl record player and, in New York, exposed him to the music business.

“Just the whole vibe … where there was no hours, no clock to be on. He was listening to music at all hours,” Levy says. “He took me to clubs. He took me to restaurants. And his apartment was full of records. And I can remember everything about that apartment — everything about that. And I couldn’t remember my house.”

Levy’s first real band was The Limits, a top Lehigh Valley band in the late 1960s and ’70s. Wexler helped The Limits get a song to record, “Say It Again,” from famed writer P.F. Sloan, who penned Barry McGuire’s “Eve of Destruction,” Johnny Rivers’ “Secret Agent Man” and many of The Grass Roots’ hits.

Levy’s next band, WAX, was his turning point. The group, formed when Levy was in college in Philadelphia, included Rob Hyman, future vocalist/songwriter of The Hooters, and Rick Chertoff, who became a famed record producer of albums such as Cyndi Lauper’s “She’s So Unusual.”

“We were really up there with the bands going on in Philly — with Nazz, with Todd Rundgren, with all those bands playing the same venues,” Levy says.

The band opened for The Everly Brothers, John Mayall and Manfred Mann, and signed a record deal for a $50,000 advance — a huge amount at the time — with Bob Crewe, a songwriter and producer who had hits with The Four Seasons. But within weeks, the label shut down and WAX dissolved.

Levy decided to switch gears.

“That was my decision — ‘OK, I can’t work this way anymore. I’m not sure what I’m gonna do, but it’s not gonna be this way,’ ” Levy says. “That got me to thinking. I was seeing the business end of music, and that really turned me on.

“I didn’t realize how that would serve me over 50 years. A lot of musicians say, ‘Oh, crap, I’ve got to put up with this stuff.’ But I always felt I wanted to put up with this stuff. I wanted to learn about it.

“It got me into managing and promoting and, more than anything else, accepting rejection,” he says with a laugh. “That was the big thing.”

Levy says he realized “There’s always gonna be a better guitar player, there’s gonna be better singers. I’ve got to figure out a way that I can do the era of music that I love — which for me happened to be the ’60s era.”

Levy returned to Allentown, reformed The Limits and released “High in the Mid-’60s.” He used his new business knowledge to license a couple of albums overseas, and got The Limits on college radio — “Which I thought was a big market — even though the guy at Epic Records disagreed with me,” he says with a laugh.

In 1985, he was asked to audition for Jay & The Techniques, the Allentown-based band that in the 1960s had Top 10 hits with “Apples, Peaches, Pumpkin Pie” and “Keep The Ball Rollin.’ ”

“I was a single dad, I was teaching school at that time, I still had The Limits going and I really wasn’t interested,” he says. “But the first time I heard Jay, I said, ‘Damn, these guys can sing. These guys are real singers — not like most of us in garage bands.’ That led to 25 years together.”

It also got Levy into management. “We gave each other a career,” he says.

Levy put together package shows in which Jay & The Techniques played as the band for the whole show, backing artists. He brought Tommy Roe, who had the chart-topping hits “Sheila,” “Dizzy,” “Sweat Pea” and “Jam Up and Jelly Tight,” out of retirement and toured with him, as well.

In 2000, Noone wanted a new band. Noone and Levy had worked together and Noone approached Levy, who not only joined, but formed a band of all Allentown players who backed Noone for more than two years. It was during those tours that Levy contemplated the book.

He says he realized, “There seems to be a pattern here. There might be a formula for even younger kids getting into the music business — or any business. Where, you got something you love, how do you re-invent yourself so that that main passion can stay alive?

“And for me, it was like all the other stuff I did — managing, tour managing, booking, all that other stuff, was so that I could keep playing music. … I wanted to say, ‘OK, how far can I take this?’”

Levy cites a few moments as pinnacles of his performing career.

While doing a soundcheck in the Georgia Dome with Jay & The Techniques, he says he heard another guitarist playing that was James Burton, a Rock & Roll Hall of Fame player who performed with Elvis, Ricky Nelson, The Everly Brothers, Johnny Cash, Roy Orbison and more.

“We ended up jamming for like 20 minutes and he ended up complimenting everybody,” Levy says. “A couple of months later, we were doing a casino show near Shreveport and he invited us all back to the club and we jammed till the wee hours of the morning.”

Another highlight was when Tommy Roe was asked to headline the 2014 International Beatles Week in Liverpool, England. Together they played the legendary Cavern Club, where The Beatles started.

“He came on — man, it was like the second coming,” Levy says. “These people who grew up in Liverpool, they remembered when The Beatles opened for Tommy Roe. So that was a huge experience for me.”

Soon after, he and Roe also played the 50th anniversary of The Beatles’ first concert at the Washington Coliseum, Levy says.

During his management career, Levy also connected with The Box Tops, the 1960s Memphis Soul group that had the hits “The Letter,” “Cry Like a Baby” and “Soul Deep.”

After Levy managed the group for several years, frontman Alex Chilton died in 2010. But Levy helped revive The Box Tops with original members Gary Tally and Billy Cunningham, and continues to tour with them.

The group in recent years played the multi-act Happy Together Tour, and next year will go out on the Flower Power Tour with The Beach Boys and Jefferson Starship.

“It sold out a year in advance,” Levy says. “How much longer will it last? Anybody’s guess. We keep saying, ‘It’s over, it’s over.’ And yet we’re still going. The Baby Boomers still want to hear this music.”

Levy says he wants The Box Tops “to go out there as guys our age but somehow coming across as really seasoned blue-eyed soul players who can do it really, really well, and any age can appreciate.

“For us, you still have to go prove it every show. If I didn’t feel I was at my top of guitar playing and singing, I wouldn’t do it. I’ve been at shows where I’ve just been embarrassed listening to certain people.”

But there’s none of that in “High in the Mid-’60s.” One thing the book is not is a tell-all about celebrities.

“I could tell stories that are probably a little negative and maybe cast people in not the best light,” Levy says. “I really just didn’t see a purpose in doing that. A, it could open you up for a lawsuit, and B, it doesn’t change my story — why I wanted to do this.

“You’re always gonna meet people that you resonate with or you don’t resonate with. When I was ready to leave Peter [Noone], he was ready to leave me, too, for example. Because it just had run its course. There was no personal animosity — we stay in touch.”

Levy says he’s sure he made some enemies in the business, “but I think I’ve made very few. … I’ve kept things really on the up-and-up business-wise, financial-wise.

“I almost literally pinch myself and say, ‘How did I get in this fraternity? How did I get in this club?’ I know I worked hard to do it, but there’s more than that, because a lot of guys work hard to do it.

“But given what I think became my path — and that was to try to keep the ’60s music really alive and vibrant and keep these acts working — I think I’ve done more than a reasonably good job over the years.”

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'High in the Mid-'60s ... How to Have A Fabulous Life in Music Without Being Famous!'